Cloudy When Virtual This is just a place for my thoughts on the industry, Cloud Computing, Virtualization, Services Oriented IT, End User Experience and many more topics…

So far I have been in this role at EMC for over 6 months and I am loving it. Being on the inside of EMC now has given me exposure to the crazy amounts of awesome, talented and “wicked smaht” people that work here. Of course with all of the cool things I am working on, there is always the need to continue to gather feedback/research from our customers and friends. This data that we need to collect helps us to drive our future products in the best possible direction for our customers to power their applications and workloads. The industry is going through many changes, and EMC is helping to drive these changes but we need your help.

I have developed a short survey to collect some basic information on your Data Center Technologies and Configurations. The survey is less than 10 minutes long, but the really cool thing is I will be giving away prizes to 3 randomly chosen people (Employees and Federation Members Excluded from Guveaways). That is of course if you want to give your contact information, which is not mandatory.

So if you have a few minutes, please fill out this survey and help to drive EMC products of the future.

The EMC CTO Office Data Center Survey

Thank You and Happy New Year!

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Its been a long time since I have been on here. Being in the field, consulting with customers and helping to drive a leading technology organization doesn’t really give me the time to post much, but sometimes there are things that just need to be documented. This is one of those times.

I have been working and building Lumenate (formerly ICI) for over 12 years now. It has been a crazy adventure. I started out being the kid who knew EMC CLARiiON and how to install that, to growing into a CTO, VCDX, vExpert, Advisory Board Member, Author, Public Speaker and much more. Enabling ICI to grow to a $50 Million dollar VAR and helping the merger into Lumenate has given me more experience than I could have ever imagined, but I have a new opportunity in front of me.

As of the beginning of July, I will be a Sr. Director in charge of CI in EMC’s Office of the CTO helping to drive the vision, strategy, and roadmap for the future of some of EMC’s technologies. This is an opportunity I could have only dreamed about when I first learned VMware and began consolidating customers environments on EMC, of course 🙂 For my career, I personally have been tied back to EMC at many levels; through my first job at Data General, then contracting to EMC as a CLARiiON SA/IC and then helping to build ICI into a top EMC/VMware partner; EMC has always been in my blood. Of course if you have gotten to know me I am also a big time geek and have always been open to the industry at large so I can understand all vendors technologies. Many of them I have sold and implemented to ensure my customers have gotten a complete solution.

As I move on to EMC and help impact a larger segment of the industry I can never forget what I am leaving behind. Lumenate is one of the top technical consulting firms in the industry. The expertise in the End User Experience, Security, Data Center and Networking world is second to none. I still consider Lumenate my family because of the amazing people and awesome history that we have had. But Lumenate is not finished yet. There are so many of my industry friends that never got a chance to learn about Lumenate, now is a good time to do that. The people that are driving Lumenate can help guide you into the future all you need to do is ask them 🙂

I do need to give a shout out to Jamie Shepard, Scott Reuter, Eric Ransden, John Fickenscher, Jocelyn Gentile and Jim Pinzino, because without you guys 12 years ago I could not be afforded this opportunity to continue to grow now.

So as I sit here and look forward I will try and actually maintain this blog, because I wont be as public in the new role as I was with Lumenate, and I still have something to say!

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So the time for session voting for VMworld 2012 is here, actually it has been here since last week. I have been able to get 3 sessions entered and I am looking to get at least one of them through. If you know me personally these are the types of events I love because it is truly aimed at the end-user and architect. There is no sales aspect to sessions at VMworld. So if you can help me out and send me your vote.

1493 Avoiding a Stalled State VDI Deployment

Track: End-User Computing
Subtracks: Desktop Virtualization

The state of Virtual Desktop deployments in many organizations have all fallen into the same category, it is what we call “Stalled State” VDI Installations. This happens when the VDI implementation was not fully planned out and architected as an End User Computing deployment. Instead, the concept of deploying VDI meant installing VMware View and starting up some desktops. Unfortunately when deploying any VDI environment there are a multitude of aspects that need to be considered such as Profile Management, Application Virtualization and Deployment, End Device Architecture, Network Connectivity, Operational Workflows and much more.

2229 Building an IaaS Cloud Offering – Lessons Learned: It’s Not About the Technology

Track: Operations
Subtracks: Cloud Service Management

The industry has finally embraced Cloud Computing to the point that many organizations are exploring what Cloud Computing means to them. When the decision comes down to building a private cloud, using a public cloud or creating a hybrid cloud; there remains a common factor in all 3 scenarios, the need to standardize all operational workflows and procedures. This one aspect of building an Infrastructure Cloud can make or break the success of the project.
During this session Brad will discuss what it takes to standardize and operationalize an IT organization to be able to utilize an Infrastructure Cloud. There will be real world scenarios and detailed examples of successful deployments vs unsuccessful deployments. The goals of the session are to allow the audience to see that a majority of the work to build any IaaS cloud offering is dictated not by the technology but by redefining how the organization functions on a daily basis.

2920 Designing the Optimal Service Catalog for the Hybrid IaaS Cloud

Track: Operations
Subtracks: Cloud Service Management

The concept of a Service Catalog has been tied to the IT industry for years since Service Oriented Architectures and ITIL have been in existence. The problem has arisen that creating a Service Catalog has been taken to somewhat of an art form. It can be done at a simplistic level, but this does not always mean that the Service Catalog will be robust enough to meet future needs. On the other hand the Service Catalog can also be created so that it is so complex that no organization could efficiently support it.
During this session Brad will discuss the methodology of creating a robust yet efficient Service Catalog that can enable the organization and allow for streamlined workflows. Considering the broad topics that Service Catalogs can cover, this session will be restricted to a Hybrid IaaS Service Catalog.

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Its about time I got my blog going for real, especially with VMworld 2011 and the announcements coming from the industry. For those of you who dont know me, I have updated my About Me page. This blog is meant to be a place for me to get out some thoughts written down.

The industry is changing so fast and most users dont keep with all the announcements or new technolgiees that are coming out. What is interesting is that for many years as virtualization became mainstream, the industry drove adoption because users NEEDED it. Datacenters were growing faster than administrators could keep up and consolidation was becoming a fundadmental building block of the future of computing.

The introduction and development of Cloud Computing should not be mistaken as the same type of movement as virtualization. Cloud is not being introduced as a fix for a major problem administrators are having. It is a means to an end for a shift in the way businesses function. When I meet with EMC, VMware and other major vendors, I try and ensure they understand not to try and develop Cloud technoliges based on what customers want; But develop Cloud technolgies on what customers WILL need. Cloud Computing will force a change in people, process and policies that should be aligned with how he technologies will function. 

The next 2-3 years is when end users need to change the way they work. Until this happens, Cloud will be a slowly adopted industry. This is the time that you, end users / administrators, need to work with consultants to figure out if your workflows and processes are Cloud Enabled. The Cloud is going to try and be goood for everyone, but in reality the first variations of Cloud will actually be more rigid than many people realize.

When evaluating Cloud technologies, assuming the organizations have designed their workflows Cloud friendly, the technology should not have to be havily customized. Customzation creates a management nightmare which is anti-Cloud. What I consider a Cloud friendly workflow iss one that involves standardizing the proccess from requisition through approval and deployment. If a workflow has any “one-offs” or manual tasks that are not standardized or reproducable, then the workflow will cause for a breakdown in standardization.

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One of the benefits of being a vExpert is the ability to see some of VMware’s Press Releases prior to the release date. Today VMware is introducing vCenter Operations. This is the culmination of the Integrin purchase and some internal developed code.
The idea behind vCenter Ops is that IT Administrators are in need of a complete data center correlation and monitoring tool. vCenter Ops will pull data from multiple sources such as vCenter, EMC Smarts, SCOM, and many other sources. It wil then be able to show capacity management, health and workload correlation. if you need to learn how a VM is affecting other VM’s on the ESX server or in the environment, this is your tool. Besides this you will have a really nice interface that is extremly easy to use. This is the first version of this so there are some small features missing such as different views per user based roles but these will work themselves out over time. I was very excited to see this today.
This is a major step for Cloud Computing and Virtualizing of Tier 1 applications. Through this new interface IT administrators will not just need to guess how things are effecting each other in the virtual world, they will have evidence.

If anyone is interested in learning more, drop me an email or message me on twitter.

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So this has been a busy year for me so far and it is only June. I started this blog because I wanted to somehow just get my thoughts around cloud and virtualization in writing. Well time has not permitted this. But I figured I will try it again.

So far this year I have been blessed to have achieved my VCDX (#36) certification which for me was a huge personal achievement. It means I realize I do understand something about architecting VMware. But what it really did for me was allow me to connect with people that I would not have met before.

Well today I have just learned I have also been selected as a VMware vExpert 2010. I knew someone had (Thanks Scott C.) had nominated me, but honestly because I had not had a blog yet and wasn’t active on the VMware Forums, I wasn’t sure I had a chance in hell. Well hell froze over so here I am. So thank you I truly appreciate the nomination and award.

Well I will try my best to keep blogging, mayhbe once a week at least but if not you can catch me on twitter @bmaltz. Also if you will be at BriForum I am giving presenting a session.

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When I speak to customers or other consultants about VDI so many people focus on how the wrong aspects of desktop management. Many people still focus on desktop management from having to manage the desktops. This is definitely an aspect of VDI BUT the OS management should be a simple prospect because of 3 reasons:

– a virtual desktop image should be managed from a centralized management platform. In most cases this is Active Directory via GPO’s.

– user configurations should be performed through the AD GPO’s instead of having individual desktops for each user. The users data has to be redirected to a file share to allow for simpler desktop management as well as centralized data security and backup.

– application virtualization has to be utilized to remove any dependencies of the application from the desktop installation. This is the ultimate realization of VDI.

Ok so what did I mean by Application Virtualization?
Well when I discuss AppVirt there are many players out there such as Microsoft, Citrix, and even VMware. WHAT!!! Yes I said VMware.
ThinApp in my opinion stands abovc all other AppVirt solutions. Yes I have been drunk on VMware Koolaid since I started playing with Workstation back in 2001 and ESX helped that along, but ThinApp, thats a whole pitcher of spiked KoolAid. I dont think people realize what ThinApp actually means to the industry.

More to follow….

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So I am just setting up the site. Soon I hope to make this blog the place where we can discuss all things cloud as well as server, application, desktop virtualization and service oriented IT (The future of IT).

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